Woolwich Terror Attack

Woolwich Terror Attack: The Response And The Aftermath

The crime has grabbed people’s attention partly because of its astonishing brutality, but also because of the sense that a rubicon has been crossed.

A couple of weeks ago on AskMen, I wrote about the failed Islamist plot to bomb an EDL march in Dewsbury, and noted how the hallmark of much modern terrorism was a marked degree of amateurism, haphazard planning and relatively small ambition. While that case was thankfully unsuccessful, this week’s murder of 25-year-old army drummer Lee Rigby showed what can happen when people with even fewer resources, but greater murderous commitment apply themselves to their grisly work.At this stage, details of the killers’ backgrounds are scant: Channel 4 news unearthed footage of Michael Adebolajo lurking behind notorious preacher Anjem Choudary at a march in 2007, while other reports suggested that last year the young man had attempted to travel to Somalia to support the militant al-Shabaab (an al-Qaeda affiliate in the Horn of Africa).The crime has grabbed people’s attention partly because of its astonishing brutality, but also because of the sense that a rubicon has been crossed. However, as the Telegraph’s defence editor Con Coughlin pointed out in his blog, the tactic of using small, self-starting, barely-resourced groups is straight from the playbook of a post-bin Laden set of Islamic radicals. Most notably, Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born, Yemen-based cleric who until his death in a 2011 drone strike broadcast internet sermons encouraging an English-speaking audience of radicals to launch basic attacks without the material support and orders of al-Qaeda’s hierarchy.And the idea of attacking a British servicemen on home turf has been circulating since at least 2007, when five men were found guilty of a plot to kidnap a British Muslim soldier, take him to a safe house in the midlands and film him demanding the removal of British troops from Muslim countries before being killed. Instructions on a private al-Qaeda forum advised that ‘It is preferable if you photograph or video the operation so that it can have a bigger set of viewers and can be used by the media.’This last point is interesting ­— the use of filming not just as a grimly pornographic flourish, but as a specific part of a strategy. It would seem to explain one of the most bizarre details of Rigby’s murder ­— that the two killers simply wandered around the road for upwards of ten minutes after the crime, with witnesses claiming that they actively encouraged people to film them and posed for photographs before speaking directly to the camera.This aspect also suggests a huge error of judgement by many media outlets in their subsequent coverage. Looking at the front pages from both The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph on Thursday, they effectively acted as megaphones for the murderers, showing as extreme a photo of possible (Adebolajo covered in the dead man’s blood and wielding his weapons) with a quote or paraphrase from him in bold type. The Mirror, Mail, Times and Independent all used the same image, but crucially editorialised against the killers (all the front pages here). Additionally, there was enough disquiet on Twitter from readers of all papers as to whether the images should have been published at all ­— for reasons of propaganda, as well as basic respect for the dead man’s family — that Roy Greenslade took to his Guardian blog to defend publication. Readers’ comments below the fold suggest that he wasn’t particularly successful in convincing them that it was anything other than an error of judgement by the paper. Similarly, Channel 4 News’ decision to interview Choudary — a marginal figure, claiming to be a devout Muslim but best described as a self-serving, slippery, evasive little shit ­— gave him a mainstream platform he’d done nothing to warrant. At this time it’s simply too early to say whether anything will change as a result of this incident. In many ways, despite the shocking nature of the crime, we have been here previously: British servicemen have been killed by civilians before (albeit in Northern Ireland: in 1971, three Scottish soldiers were murdered after being lured to a remote area of north Belfast by three women; and when two off-duty soldiers were lynched at a Republican funeral in 1988, an event also largely captured on camera); throughout the IRA’s campaign, British soldiers stationed here and in Europe didn’t wear uniforms off base in case they were targeted; and many previous events from the Black September hijackings to 9/11 have felt like a new frontier in brutality to which the public have quickly adapted.Most important to remember is that Drummer Ryan’s murderers and their ilk are doomed to fail. Conor Gearty of LSE points out that ‘successful’ terrorists are those like the ANC and the IRA who have a set of goals which are both clearly articulated and in some way realistic and an ability to move beyond violence to a political settlement. By contrast, while the bloodthirsty murderers of radical Islamism might claim a religious or political motive, they are in fact closer to the furious nihlist who shoots up a school or cinema. ‘Sure, the killers used violence to communicate a message of sorts, rather than for personal gain. But the demands they made are so diffuse as to be effectively meaningless — "change your government!" or "stop acting the way you do" being more infantile ejaculations than efforts at any kind of serious discussion.’It’s fitting that the last word taken away should be that not of the blood-drenched, ex-jailbird Adebolajo, but of Ingrid Loyau Kennett,the unbelievably level-headed Brownie leader who faced one of the attackers, attempted to talk him down and told him: ‘Right now it is only you versus many people — you are going to lose.’